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Rui Kamishiro is a girl.
She knows because her parents and teachers call her one. She knows because everyone around her calls her a she. She knows because her friends are all boys but she’s different from them somehow. She doesn’t think she’s all that different from them but the boys she knows all seem to think so.
Is it her hair? Her friends, all boys, have short hair, but she has long hair. She thinks that’s what makes them think she’s different.
Maybe long hair is what makes someone a girl?
She’ll have to ask.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a girl.
It’s not her hair that makes her a girl, she discovers. She knows a girl with short hair now. One of her boy friends has long hair now. So what is it?
She plays football on the field with all her friends, even if running makes her tired and she can’t kick the deflated black-and-white ball in the right direction. She likes superheroes and robots and books and writing stories. She doesn’t know a lot of girls like that.
Though, lots of girls she knows like pink and purple and white. All the boys she knows like blue and green and black and brown. She thinks those are ugly colors. She likes pink and purple and white like most of the girls. She thinks that’s what makes the boys think she’s different.
Maybe liking pink is what makes someone a girl?
She’ll have to ask.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a girl.
A girl, yes, but very different from the other girls she knows. She knows she’s different because her parents keep making faces at her when she says she doesn’t like makeup or perfume or dolls. She knows she’s different because she doesn’t like dresses.
She’s learned that liking pink doesn't make someone a girl. She knows a girl whose favorite colors are blue and green. She knows a boy who likes purple. That confused her.
She asked the boy once if liking purple made him a girl. He said no, he just likes the color. And so, Rui searches for another answer to her never-ending question of why she is somehow different from the boys.
She saw the boys wearing suits once. She wants to wear one too. It would be better than what she wears. Anything would be better than what she wears.
Her mom asked her if she wanted to go to a school with uniforms once. She said the uniform would have a skirt. Rui had cried at the thought of wearing one every day. She didn’t go to that school.
She knows some people use a different word for her because of what she wears. She forgot what the word is. Something that ends in -boy? She forgot what it starts with. She wasn’t paying attention.
The word confuses her a bit. Boy is usually used for someone else. Girl is usually used for her . Why? Why is she called a girl sometimes, but a boy other times? She doesn't know.
Which word does she like more? Boy. She likes that, even if it’s only part of that word they use to describe her, the one that she can’t remember. But what makes a girl? What makes a boy?
Maybe wearing skirts and dresses is what makes someone a girl?
She’ll have to ask.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a girl.
She’s learned that wearing skirts doesn’t make someone a girl. One time she saw a commercial on her TV, one for some show or something. She forgot what it was advertising. All she remembers is there was a man in a dress and makeup, or something like that. It confused her. She thought wearing skirts was what made someone a girl?
She’d asked her mom. Her mom had said boys can wear dresses too, Rui. You can wear whatever you want and be happy, you know? Sometimes wearing dresses makes boys happy. And sometimes there are other reasons that’ll make more sense when you’re older. It depends on the person—just don’t be judgmental, okay Rui-chan?
And Rui had nodded when her mom said that, but now that her mom has said that, she’s just more confused. It isn’t wearing skirts that makes someone a girl, according to her mom. It isn’t liking pink that makes someone a girl. It isn’t long hair that makes someone a girl. So what makes someone a girl?
People in Rui’s class have crushes now. Rui gets one too, on a boy she puts on shows with. It’s an innocent crush, one that’s never going to get anywhere, but one Rui indulges in nonetheless. She wants to hold her crush’s hand between classes. She wants to spend all her time with him. She thinks kissing is kind of gross but if she had to do it she’d do it with him. She thinks he’s pretty, and he makes her feel happy every second she’s with him. It’s young, innocent love, but love nonetheless.
She knows it is only a matter of time before he leaves her just like all of her other friends.
The boys in Rui’s class like girls. The boys tell her every so often about girls they like. They don’t want to talk to her as much as they used to, though. That makes her sad. She misses when the boys considered them part of her group. Girls are nice, Rui thinks, but she doesn’t relate to girls as much.
Wait, aren’t I a girl?
Her thoughts really don’t make sense sometimes.
Whatever the case may be, Rui is lonely now. Her classmates think she’s weird for what she wears. They think she’s weird because she has issues with noises and textures and loud sounds and has to wear headphones during school assemblies. They think she’s weird because she writes plays in her head. They think she’s weird because she likes “boy things” too.
It’s not liking “boy things” that makes someone a boy though, is it? It’s not liking “girl things” that makes someone a girl either, right? So what is it that makes someone a boy? What is it that makes Rui a girl, what is it that makes her different from them?
Maybe liking boys is what makes someone a girl?
She’ll have to ask.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a girl?
It isn’t liking boys that makes someone a girl, Rui discovers. Her childhood friend Nene likes girls and she’s still a girl. So Rui is back to square one, trying to figure out why she’s considered a girl, why the boys see her as different from them somehow.
She doesn’t care that Nene likes girls. It confused her a bit, initially. She’d asked Nene if that made her more of a boy than a girl. She’d laughed it off and said Rui was stupid and girls can like girls too, you know.
The boys in Rui’s class have deep voices now. Rui wishes her voice sounded more like theirs. They keep complaining about how annoying voice cracks are but Rui sees that as a small price for having a voice like that.
She complained to her mom about it once. She got so jealous, so upset her voice didn’t sound like the boys, that she wanted to stop singing forever. She used to love to sing. Now all she thinks is that her voice is wrong and disgusting and so unlike herself.
She asked her mom when’s my voice going to get deeper? I think I sound funny and her mom had just chuckled and said Rui-chan, you’re a girl, your voice isn’t going to get much deeper and Rui thinks that’s the most upsetting thing that has ever been said to her.
She doesn’t know why it upsets her so much. She doesn’t know why she’s still so angry that her mom called her a girl and said her voice wouldn’t get any lower. That wasn’t—still isn’t—right to her, somehow.
So what? What makes her different from all the other boys?
Her body. The one conclusion she hadn’t wanted to come to, but one that is made painfully obvious in middle school. Rui hates every inch of her body. She doesn’t know why. She just knows that when she looks in the mirror, that isn’t her.
She’d looked at herself for too long in the shower once. What she saw looked so wrong, so unsettling, so decidedly unlike the Rui she wants to be. She’d wrapped herself in a towel and cried for a while after that. She didn’t want to see herself—still doesn’t. She’d been shaking, angry, not even knowing why—all she knows is she vows to find a way to get rid of her chest one day. She vows to find a way to make her voice deeper like the boys and to grow tall like them and to play sports like them and to love herself again, to love singing again, to finally be comfortable in her own skin.
Rui can’t imagine why anyone would want to be a girl. She presumes they all feel like this.
So, dejectedly, Rui comes to a conclusion. Maybe it’s one’s body that makes them a girl.
But this time, she isn’t going to ask if that’s the case. She thinks it’s a solid final verdict, even if it’s one that brings her nothing but sadness.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a girl.
What is Rui Kamishiro?
She doesn’t get it. She thought she’d finally found an answer to her ages-old question of what it is that makes her so different from the boys, but Rui stands corrected. It’s all because of one person she met on the rooftop during middle school. One person that taught Rui so many things about what people can be.
Mizuki Akiyama.
Mizuki Akiyama has made Rui question so many things about himself. Who he likes. What makes someone a boy, or a girl, or something in-between like Mizuki is. Mizuki makes her feel warm and fuzzy inside, warm and fuzzy in the way love makes Rui feel, warm and fuzzy like her childhood crushes made her feel before they all inevitably left her, and she can only hope that Mizuki won’t leave her too.
Mizuki makes her feel warm and fuzzy in the way boys make Rui feel. But Mizuki isn’t a boy. They aren’t a girl, either. Rui wonders what label you even use for liking someone like Mizuki. She thinks asking would be a bit rude, though.
Rui asks Mizuki how they knew they weren’t a boy or a girl one day on the rooftop. Mizuki just laughs. It’s a long story, Rui, they said. You kind of have to live it. Why do you ask, anyways?
Why do you ask? It echoes inside Rui’s head.
And a shaking, trembling Rui admits to them that day, I want to be a boy, I want to be a boy so badly and I don’t know why, that’s weird of me, isn’t it? She expects Mizuki to sneer or laugh or judge her, but they just smile and ask,
Well, why do you want to be a boy?
I don’t know, I’m just—I’m so jealous of them all the time, Mizuki, did you know I used to sing? I used to sing and I quit because I just couldn’t stand listening to my voice compared to the boys’ voices and I wish mine sounded like theirs—and there’s more, it’s just—embarrassing to admit—and there, Rui has admitted it, and he expects Mizuki, the last friend he has, to leave him right then and there.
But Mizuki keeps smiling, and the words they say next will stick with Rui forever.
It’s really up to you to figure it out in the end—but if you want to be a boy this badly, and it’s got you this upset—you might be a boy, Rui. And you have to think a lot about the how or the why, but—what’s stopping you?
I’m scared, Rui admits, and Mizuki says don't be, you've got me, I’ll always love you.
I’ll always love you— and Rui knows that he will be okay.
—
Rui Kamishiro is a boy.
He finally has the answer to his question—it’s not interests, or preferences, or who one likes, or one’s body that makes them a girl. It’s what one's mind says. It’s because of that gnawing feeling inside of him—the feeling that reaffirms his body is wrong, that he should have been born male instead, that causes him to dissociate, that causes him to make rash decisions in the favor of looking more like a man—that he knows that he is a boy. Truthfully, his short haircut, his binder, the efforts he’s spent on voice training, are nothing more than temporary relief for that feeling, yet slowly, he has begun to feel more at home in his own body.
Slowly, as years go by, Rui begins to call Mizuki his partner, the person closest to them, his first kiss, his first real relationship, one of the first people he has known who has never left him. It’s surreal how much his relationship with Mizuki has changed. He went from a crying, insecure boy just coming to terms to himself—sobbing his heart out with his head on Mizuki’s shoulder as he admitted to them, I’m a boy, Mizuki, I think I’m a boy— to the confident director that he is today, to the boyfriend that he is today.
Slowly, he gains the confidence to tell his friends—his troupe, his parents, his school. His parents said they’d love him regardless. His friends said the same—or some of them had, anyways. He knows now which friends to keep and which ones he should have avoided long ago. He knows he’ll always be shamed for this aspect of him, and it’s naïve of him to assume otherwise, but at the very least, he can make his struggles more tolerable.
Eventually, he moves out. Goes to college. Gets a job. Makes his own money, enough to finally buy himself his first dose of testosterone. Shots rather than gel—Rui figures he has to get used to needles eventually, anyways. And so, he takes his first dose. It’s anticlimactic, not as exciting as he thought it would be when he first realized. But it’s a step, just a small step, to becoming the person he was meant to be.
Rui Kamishiro is a boy. This, he knows for sure.